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“Stop running from me every time I talk about our families.”
Pain erupted in my chest as I thought about everything I was kept from over the years. “If you want to talk about your family, go ahead, I’d love to hear about your mom and dad and anyone else you want to tell me about, but I can’t talk about mine. And I don’t want to hear about them either. Okay?” I snapped back.
“Why?”
“Because. Just drop it.” My body shook as sadness overwhelmed me.
“No.” He said, his eyebrows dropped over his eyes as he tried read me. “Tell me why it upsets you so much.”
“No Mav. Now get off of me.”
“Not a chance. Tell me!” He demanded.
I yelled back as a sob ripped from my chest. “Because up until an hour ago I didn’t even know I had nieces and nephews!”
Horror crossed his face as he watched me crack under him. I closed my eyes and felt the tears spill into my hair as he watched me in shock. I covered my face with my hands and sobbed, letting tears I’d kept buried for years, free.
He got off of me and lifted me into his lap and held me as I cried. He leaned against the headboard and covered us up with the blankets as I fought to control my errant emotions. When I finally calmed down I wiped my eyes and buried my face in his neck.
“Tell. Me. Everything.” He ordered calmly but with authority. “I need to know what’s hurting you.”
I took a couple of deep breaths and mulled it over in my head before finally just opening my mouth and saying the words I hadn’t spoken to anyone ever before.
“They cut me off and kicked me out when I left you.”
His body tensed under mine as my words hung between us. “What do you mean?”
“When I came home that night, I told my mom what happened. Stupidly expecting her to comfort me.” I said with disdain and shook my head. He pulled back to look at me, but I kept my eyes down. “She ran right to my dad, and they both started screaming at me, demanding that I go find you and beg you to take me back. They told me over and over again how they had worked too hard to form a relationship with the Jones family for me to fuck it up for them with my stupid teenage dramatics.”
“You have to be fucking kidding me.” He said angrily. His arms were tight around me as rage coiled though his body.
I shook my head sadly. “When I refused, they gave me the ultimatum to get back with you or be cut off and kicked out of their lives forever. I thought they were kidding, like they were playing some cruel joke on me. But half an hour later, I had a backpack worth of stuff and my cash savings of seven hundred dollars in my pocket and nothing else as they slammed their front door in my face. And I haven’t spoken to them since.” Maverick was silent but he threaded his fingers through my hair as he tried to contain his anger for me to continue. “I lost my college fund, my trust fund, my car, my cell phone, my future and every picture or keepsake from our ten years together. I left with only the few things I managed to grab as I sobbed for them to let me stay. But it was nothing compared to what I had before I came looking for you that night.”
“I’ll fucking destroy them.” He said in a voice so dark and menacing it made me shiver in his lap even as his skin warmed me. “I’ll fucking make them rue the day they ever wronged you Cora. I promise you I will.”
“I don’t want that. I don’t want anything from them anymore. I’ve come too far, survived too much because of them, to go back now.”
“How can you stand to be near me right now?” He asked, turning my head to look at him. “How can you look at me and not hate me for what they did to you because of me? Jesus fucking Christ Cora, why didn’t you come to me?” He demanded, anger flooding from him the more he processed this. “Why didn’t you let me help you?”
“Because that was what they wanted, they wanted me to come to you so they could continue to use the relationship they had with you and your family to their benefit. I don’t know what they’ve gained from your name over the years but I’m sure it’s extensive. That’s why they never told you anything about me, because if they’d told you the truth you’d have destroyed them, and they knew it.”
“How the fuck did you survive? Where did you go?”
I shrugged my shoulders and sighed. “I bounced around from couch to couch for a while and then made my way to the city and got three jobs and worked my ass off for years, living in shelters and shit ass apartments and refused to give up.”
“Jake and Penelope didn’t help you? Did they know what happened?” He slid out from under me and started pacing the floor in his naked glory.
I paused and shrugged my shoulders as I tried to handle this part delicately, “I don’t know what they were told, but I didn’t see them before I left, so they never heard my side either way.”
He turned and looked at me with such disbelief on his perfect face. “Jesus Christ.”
“I’m fine Mav. I survived without them.” I knelt on the edge of the bed and grabbed him on one of his laps back and forth and pulled him to me. I pressed my forehead to his and buried my fingers in his hair and held on to him when he tried to keep moving. “I’m right here, a stronger person than I was back then because of their evil ways. I’m right here, with you.”
“You should have been with me the whole fucking time!” He snapped and growled through his clenched teeth as his restraint shattered. “I could have won you back if they wouldn’t have thrown you out like fucking pieces of shit!” He wrapped his hands around my body and crushed his mouth to mine, kissing me roughly. It was angry and passionate, and I held onto him and took what he gave me. “They stole you from me for ten fucking years Cora. Admit it, if they hadn’t forced your hand, you would have considered forgiving me. You know we could have worked it out, don’t you?”
I took a deep breath and admitted what I’d prohibited myself from even considering over the years. “Yes, I would have forgiven you with time. I would have figured out a way to work it out.”
“I hated you for leaving me so easily and never even giving me the decency of talking to me about it afterwards. I let my anger towards you fester the longer you didn’t reach out to me, and it was all because of them. Not because of you at all.” He cursed and pulled away, grabbing the lamp off the bedside table, and threw it against the wall where it shattered into a dozen pieces. He screamed at the top of his lungs as every muscle in his body went rigid with his anguish. He turned to me, and I slumped back on the bed in fear of the pure unapologetic rage in his eyes. “I will make them pay Cora. I promise you that.”
